Film Culture (December 1957)

chardson, is a scathing and brilliant work, recommended to all FC readers. Also recommended: William Saroyan’s “The Cave Dwellers,”’a fable of our time that brings a glow of enchantment to the Broadway theater again and for which we have, alas, no counterpart on the screen today. Some of the fabulous Henri Langlois’ promises, made when he was here recently: to restore some 3,000 newly discovered feet to Nosferatu; to re-edit the three different versions he has of Foolish Wives into a single film, thereby making it more complete than ever before; to salvage the footage Eisenstein shot for Bezhin lug and Part II of Ivan the Terrible and bring them to the Cinémathéque in Paris (from the film archives in the USSR where, contrary to all rumors, they supposedly still exist); to reedit Parts I and Il of The Wedding March according to the notes Stroheim gave him based on the original script; to also bring to Paris the portion of Ivan, Part III, that Eisenstein shot in color before his death; and, most fantastic of all, to trace down the ubiquitous rumor (this time from West Germany) of a so-called “complete” print of Greed. (This latter is beginning to be as legendary as the Hindu rope trick.) In any case: in God’s ear! In No. XIX of this column (FILM CULTURE, No. 4, Summer, 1955), I stated that the interpretation Von Sternberg gave the second horizontal bar in the Russian Orthodox double-barred crucifix (in The Scarlet Empress) was as the footrest of Christ on the cross. It remained for my daughter Gretchen to challenge this by reminding me that the Russian Orthodox cross has three bars, the short top one representing the mocking legend placed over Christ’s head, with the bottom bar slanted to recall Christ’s pressing down with his foot in anguish. (And, in fact, Von Sternberg’s crucifixes did have three bars, whose functions were correctly depicted in the film. Their symbolism is, of course, traditional.) Which reminds me of the ravishing last shot in Stroheim’s The Merry Widow with its enormous crucifix in the cathedral during the nuptials of Prince Danilo and Sally, a crucifix with its agonized Christ extending from what appears to be the floor to the ceiling of the huge, vaulted interior, occupying the whole left side of the screen. Was there ever such a crucifix? And, if not, doesn’t Grierson’s phrase “the creative interpretation of reality” find one of its most eloquent illustrations here? There is a lot more to be said for this extraordinarily bizarre and sardonic comedy of moeurs which has both baffled and infuriated those who have taken its “eccentricities” literally . . . but that will have to wait for another day. CENSOR’S OFFICE (From ‘“‘Cinema Nuovo’’) GERMAN AND FRENCH CINEMA IN RETROSPECT THE GERMAN CYCLE On October 24 the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened a cycle of German films under the general title ‘Past and Present: a Selection of German Films, 1896-1957.” I worked on the preparation of the cycle to a certain extent and may say a few words about it while it is still comparatively new. The present retrospect — scheduled to run about three months, through January 22 — was prepared under certain difficulties, which prevent it from being as comprehensive as the Museum’s recent four-month French cycle. Not nearly as many films were available to represent the several periods, and for various reasons it was not feasible to show some of the interesting films which were available. Still it is satisfying that the cycle has been realized, and in it we can see a number of films, old and new, which either have never been seen in this country before or have not been seen here for perhaps a generation. Among the silent films there are some extremely important titles. I think myself that unquestionably the major work here is Jessner’s Backstairs, an utterly overpowering film. It was Jessner’s first film, and presumably Paul Leni had more to do with it than just the design of the sets. Whatever its true authorship, it is one of the great films — both of Germany and of the world. Von Gerlach’s The Chronicle of the Gray House is only represented by an excerpt but it certainly should be seen. Then there is a fairly long print (though apparently not complete) of Lang’s Spzes, plus three other films of the late -Twenties: May’s Asphalt, Schwarz’s The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrowna, and Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl. The sound period up until the end of World War II does not come off well. There are some interesting films, but as a whole they are not particularly representative and there are hardly any great rarities among them. Considerable emphasis has been placed upon the postwar films; counting The Captain From Koepenick (which was shown the night of the opening, October 23), there are fifteen titles announced, some of them made within the past two or three years. Many of these, of course, will be new to this